The three Chinese brands, which have emerged as trade favourites due to a margin payout that’s 5-6% more than what the other mainstream brands offer.Gulveen Aulakh&Writankar Mukherjee | ET Bureau | August 05, 2016, 09:18 IST

NEW DELHI | KOLKATA: The Chinese invasion of the Indian smartphone market has started to give tough competition to the top three brands – Samsung Electronics, Micromax Informatics and Intex Technologies. The Far East brigade, led by Oppo, Vivo and Gionee, together gained significant market share in the April-June quarter at the cost of incumbents on back of an aggressive retail and marketing strategy.

The three Chinese brands, which have emerged as trade favourites due to a margin payout that’s 5-6% more than what the other mainstream brands offer and higher payment for display space and branding — have made rapid inroads into the smallest of neighbourhood stores where Samsung and Indian brands used to rule the charts. The moves have started to show results.

The Chinese smartphone brands, including Lenovo, expanded their share to 27% of the total smartphone market in the quarter ended June from 21% in the preceding three months, according to Hong Kongbased Counterpoint Technology Market Research.

In contrast, Samsung’s share fell to 25.6% during the quarter ended June from 29% in January-March. Micromax’s share slipped to 14.1% from 17%, while Intex had 8.5% share compared with 10%.

While Samsung shipped more units in absolute numbers, its share narrowed because its growth rate slowed compared to the Chinese brands, said Tarun Pathak, senior telecom analyst at Counterpoint Research. “Oppo, Vivo and Gionee are now strong in the entry-to-Rs 20,000 segment, which impacted other brands,” he said.

Retailers said Oppo, Vivo and Gionee have long-term plans for India. “They are now making investments on product service and the product price is cheaper for the consumer on a like-to-like basis than the mainstream brands without any compromise on quality,” said a spokesperson of the All India Mobile Retailers Association, a body of 30,000 neighbourhood mobile phone stores.

Samsung countered the data and said it had consolidated its smartphone market share to 47.7% in the first six months of 2016 from 38.4% in the period a year earlier. “Not only do we lead the premium segment with an over 50% market share, our Galaxy J2 series smartphones in the affordable segment, with Make for India innovations, has emerged as the most popular device of India, contributing 24% of the smartphone value market share,” said Manu Sharma, vice president-mobile business, Samsung India Electronics.

The Chinese players are bringing in phones that offer high-end features at affordable prices and attracting more users, said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner India.

“Samsung has already lost out to Oppo, Vivo and Gionee in China and it’s a matter of time replicating similar success in India,” said Gionee India CEO Arvind R Vohra. Emails sent to Oppo and Vivo remained unanswered till press time. Micromax declined comment. Intex Technologies director Keshav Bansal said the company had a huge presence in the offline retail market.